When we reached the bluffs, Myoko and Gretchen were forced to release their grip on my arms — the stairway down was only one person wide. I made sure Gretchen had a firm hold on the banister, then took the lead downward.
The canopy that usually covered the stairs had been removed for the winter. Therefore, we had a clear view of the lake stretching off to the horizon, glimmering with catches of starlight. On either side of the steps, tangles of thistle and burdock grew despite the looseness of the soil. The weeds had gone brittle in the winter's cold, but plenty of life remained in their roots: they always sprang back when the weather warmed, and I expected Oberon would soon be down here using his pincers to prune any vegetation that encroached on the stairs.
Thinking of Oberon, I glanced back over my shoulder and saw him making his ponderous way down the stairs. The big lobster refused to leave his queen unprotected among strangers… though at the moment, the greatest threat to Gretchen was that Oberon would miss his footing and become a bull-sized avalanche plummeting down upon us.
But Oberon was sure-footed despite his ungainly size: eight legs bestowed remarkable stability. We descended the steps without incident and found ourselves on Gretchen's private pier, facing the good ship Dainty Dinghy.
It was not, of course, a dinghy… nor was it close to dainty. Gretchen's boat was a full-fledged frigate, a former ship-of-war in the Rustland navy and decommissioned in its prime under dubious circumstances.
Specifically: in Gretchen's youth, when she was wild and adventurous and unafraid of open sunlight, Gretchen had wanted a ship. She voiced this desire to a Rustland admiral over whom she exercised undue influence. The admiral somehow arranged for the frigate to be declared "obsolete and supernumerary," whereupon Gretchen purchased it at a rigged auction for vastly less than its true worth. Later, the admiral had been court-martialed, and it was now ill-advised for either Gretchen or the Dinghy to venture into Rustland waters; but lucky for us, the lake's north shore from Dover to the Niagara river was Feliss territory. We were entirely safe from Rustland's old grudge.
Unless we were blown off course. Which I didn't want to think about. Our streak of bad luck had to end sometime, right?
"Ahoy, the ship!" Pelinor shouted. Good thing he'd taken the initiative. If we'd left the job to Gretchen, she'd have stood on the dock who-knows-how-long, genteelly clearing her throat until somebody noticed us.
Two seconds later, a head poked into view above the ship's railing. It was not a human head; since the light from the Caryatid's shoulderflame didn't carry far, I couldn't see the face distinctly, but I knew it lacked eyes, nose, and mouth. This was Captain Zunctweed, an alien I'd met several times. He belonged to a race that demonmongers called Patatas: Spanish for potatoes, so-called because his people had pock-marks all over their bodies like the "eyes" of a potato. Some of Zunctweed's pock-marks were eyes, randomly arranged from head to toe. Other pocks were breathing orifices, others were for eating, a few were for smelling or hearing… and the rest had yet to be understood by what we laughingly called Science on post-Tech Earth.
All we knew about Patatas, one could learn from a brief inspection of any member of the race:
(a) They were human-shaped with two arms, two legs, and a head. However, they had practically no torso — their legs came up almost to their armpits, giving them a gangling gawky appearance but truly astonishing speed when they chose to run.
(b) Despite their sprinting prowess, Patatas never ran when they could walk, and never walked when they could lie in a hammock, bawling out orders.
(c) It took bitter cold or heat before Patatas would wear clothing. Quite simply, they liked showing off their unclad bodies. And no two members of their race had anything close to the same skin coloration — I'd seen one covered with swirls of lurid red and orange, another who was eye-watering turquoise with zebra stripes of mauve, and a third whom I might describe as "reverse cheetah": dark brown with flaming yellow spots.
Captain Zunctweed was mostly white with smears of soft green on his elbows, knees, and other major joints. Oberon claimed that Zunctweed "enhanced" his true coloration by rubbing himself with grass… but given the time of year, he hadn't had access to green grass for several months, so at the moment he was au naturel.
Zunctweed folded his hands resignedly on the deck-rail in front of him and looked down on us like a dignified grandfather interrupted by noisy brats. This was quite a trick, considering that he had no facial features to give this impression. Still, the collection of flecks and divots on his cranium radiated aggrieved forbearance. "Yes?"
The alien's voice was a chorus of whispers — his multiple mouths talking simultaneously, saying the same words. I theorized that each breathing orifice on his body had its own small-scale lungs; no single mouth could draw enough air to achieve significant speech volume, but acting together, they could make themselves heard. I'd always had a modest desire to dissect Zunctweed and see if my theory was correct… but like my other vague notions for Scientific Research, nothing had ever come of it.
"Good evening, captain," Gretchen said. "We're here to go for a sail."
"A sail?" Zunctweed repeated the words as if he'd never heard them before. "A sail. A sail. No one informed us of any sail." He gravely turned to speak with someone behind him on deck. "Have we received any memoranda concerning a sail?"
He was answered by a high-pitched chitter. That had to come from a member of Dinghy's crew — aliens called NikNiks, like rhesus monkeys but as smart as human five-year-olds. They understood English, but didn't speak it; their mouths couldn't shape the words. Instead, they talked in high-pitched squirrellike tirades. Zunctweed claimed to understand them perfectly… and since nobody else could comprehend a syllable, he'd become captain: the only slave in Gretchen's possession who could converse with both humans and the crew.
"Zunctweed," Gretchen said, "you haven't heard about this trip because I just decided on the spur of the moment. Wild and spontaneous… that's how I am."
She smiled prettily. With dimples. Gretchen could make her dimples appear at will.
"Ah," replied Zunctweed. "Wild and spontaneous. I see. Gaiety. Song-and-dance. Here we go round the mulberry bush. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. All very well for some people — those who can afford to leap before they look. Still, at your age, one might expect such thoughtless frivolity would have begun to taper off."
Gretchen gasped in outrage. Oberon clacked his pincers. "Zunctweed! You're talking to our mistress."
"Our mistress?" Zunctweed repeated. "Our mistress? You may have the pleasure of such a relationship, Oberon, but Ms. Kinnderboom is not my mistress, she is merely my owner. A subtle distinction, but there it is. Whatever gratification you find in being a slave, I am only kept here by sorcery."
"Captain Zunctweed," Gretchen said sharply, "I'm aware you dislike your position in my household. But you work for me and you'll take my orders. I've decided to sail to Niagara Falls; that's all you need to know."
"That's it, is it? All I need to know. Well." Zunctweed spoke with half his mouths while the other mouths heaved ostentatious sighs. "Then I don't need to know how long it takes to make a boat shipshape after long periods of disuse? Years when you were too busy with parties and fine food and umty-tiddly to care about basic nautical maintenance? And that's not to mention the winter just past. It's a good thing I don't need to know how hard winter is on a ship. When the lake freezes and ice crushes against the hull—"